Da Song Hanxing period, there were two nationally famous carpenters in Lingfeng City of Huizhou , one was named Gongsun Yuan and the other was named Lu Daoyuan.
Five days ago, Gongsun Yuan suddenly received an urgent document from the northern front line. Since then, he has locked himself in the study and never came out again. He is in there without thinking about what to do every day.
On this day, the butler Xia Fu suddenly knocked on the door of the study and reported that it was Lu Daoyuan, the head of the Lu family, who had returned to the west. After hearing this, Gongsun Yuan burst into tears and said in pain: "Brother... why did you leave suddenly!"
It turned out that Gongsun Yuan's real name was Lu Doqi, and he was Lu Daoyuan's brother. Both of them were descendants of Luban . Lu Daoyuan has always believed that carpenters should do their best to develop new agricultural tools to help farmers improve their efficiency and improve their lives. However, Lu Dodge believes that he should make every effort to develop new weapons to help the country strengthen its military's strength to resist foreign enemies.
both said that they were different and they were not planning to each other. The two brothers were in a stalemate. Lu Doqi moved out of the Lu Mansion in anger and changed his name to Gongsun Yuan. It was from that time that the two brothers regarded them as enemies, and they never had to interact for decades. Now that he suddenly heard the news of his elder brother's death, Gongsun Yuan felt extremely sad. No matter what the two of them had before, it was his brother who broke the bones and connected the tendons, and the blood was thicker than water!
Gongsun Yuan came to Lu Mansion tremblingly with the help of Xia Fu, and saw Lu Daoyuan's body lying peacefully in the coffin. After Gongsun Yuan asked, he found out that his elder brother did not die of illness, but was shot to death by an arrow.
Gongsun Yuan hurriedly asked them if they had reported to the official position? The Lu family said that they had reported to the government, and the government also sent several constables to come, but after they arrived at the Lu government, they only wanted to ask for money, and did not take the case seriously at all. They just looked around and left with the money.
Gongsun Yuan asked about some of the elder brother's situation. According to Lu Daoyuan's son-in-law Zhang Kuo, since Lu Daoyuan's son died in the battlefield against the Jin soldiers three years ago, he has become nervous. When he saw a stranger on the street, he said that the other party was a spy from Jin Kingdom . Last year, his daughter died of serious illness, which was another huge blow to him. From then on, he locked himself in the villa on the top of the mountain and stopped coming out.
The day before yesterday, the servant delivered him food as usual, but found that he was lying on the recliner in the garden with several feather arrows inserted into his chest. For a long time, five or six arrows were inserted into the recliner around the recliner.
Gongsun Yuan's heart trembled suddenly when he heard this, and he said to Zhang Kuo: "Are those feather arrows still there now? Can you lend them to me to see!" "Of course there is no problem. Please wait a moment, I will ask someone to pick them up now." After that, he ordered his servant to take them away.
Gongsun Yuan took the feather arrow and looked at it over and over again, and then he stumbled it with his hands. He found that the material of this arrow seemed to be made of wood but it was a little different. It looked like bamboo didn't look like bamboo. Moreover, it was thinner and shorter than ordinary feather arrows, and it was much lighter in weight, and its length was only a few inches. The strangest thing is that the tail feathers of bows and arrows are generally made of feathers, and the tail feathers of this bow and arrow are actually made of wooden. The more Gongsun Yuan looked, the heavier his face became.
"Master, have you found any problem?" Xia Fu asked curiously. Gongsun Yuan remained silent and turned to ask Zhang Kuo where Lu Daoyuan died of an arrow. He wanted to go to the scene to see it. Seeing that he looked solemn and did not dare to neglect, Zhang Kuo hurried forward to lead the way.
The villa in Lu Mansion was built independently on a small open space above the top of the mountain. There was no house within a few hundred meters nearby. The building closest to it was the dilapidated abandoned temple on another mountain. There was a deep valley a hundred meters wide between the two mountains.From this we can see that the murderer's arrow may only be shot from the ruined temple, but how did the murderer shoot the arrow from such a distance?
After Gongsun Yuan left Lu Mansion and returned home, he called Xia Fu to the study and said, "Do you still remember the urgent document sent by the front line a few days ago? It was sent by Liu Hu."
This Liu Hu was formerly the apprentice of Gongsun Yuan. Later, after the Jin soldiers invaded the Song Dynasty, he resolutely joined the army and made many outstanding achievements in the army. Now he is a great general of the anti-Jin army.
The troops he led have fought with the Jin soldiers several times in recent times, and I don’t know where the Jin soldiers got a batch of very strange crossbows. The long range and high accuracy of this kind of crossbow are unprecedented. However, this kind of crossbow has a weakness, that is, its penetration is very weak, and feather arrows cannot pierce the armor at all. Although it cannot pierce the armor and bring direct fatal damage to the soldiers, it is strange that any soldier who is injured by such feather arrows, even if it is only scratched, the injured soldiers will suffer from strange diseases and die after a few days.
Liu Hu suspected that the other party used poison on the feather arrows, so he invited many poison masters to check the feather arrows, but there was no trace of poison tempering on the feather arrows. It was because the Jin soldiers possessed such strange crossbows that the Song army suffered consecutive defeats. Liu Hu really had no choice but to tell his master about this, hoping that he could come up with his years of experience to come up with a solution.
Gongsun Yuan looked at the feather arrow in his hand and continued to say to Xia Fu: "At present, I only know that the crossbow used by the Jin soldiers now has ten launch slots, and can fire up to ten bows and arrows at a time. Its maximum range can reach 350 steps, which is as much as three or four times the range of ordinary crossbows. The bows and arrows it uses are short and thin, and its tail feathers are made of wooden and very vertical, which is conducive to pushing the bows and arrows to fly after the bow string is released."
listen At this point, Xia Fu suddenly looked at the bow and arrow in Gongsun Yuan's hand, with an incredible expression on his face, and exclaimed: "Isn't the bow and arrow mentioned in the letter exactly the same as the bow and arrow that killed Mr. Lu?"
"You are right! But who would have so much trouble finding the strange crossbow used by the Jin soldiers to kill a crazy old man who has no power to tie a chicken? What is this person aiming for?" The two of them couldn't understand the cause and effect relationship, and finally decided to go to the dilapidated temple first to see if they could find any other clues.
Gongsun Yuan and Xia Fu were about to reach the ruined temple, and there was no warning that it was pouring rain in the sky, and the two of them ran into the ruined temple in a panic. The rain was very heavy, and the rain washed down the soil on the mountain like a mountain torrent. Suddenly, the two found that countless insect corpses were washed out by the rain. Seeing this, Xia Fu rushed out to check in the heavy rain, and dug out a sluggish from the soil there. Before Xia Fu ran back, he picked up the corpses of several insects.
When Gongsun Yuan saw the sai sai brought back by Xia Fu, he couldn't help but exclaim: "This sai sai is designed so exquisitely, and the material used seems to be exactly the same as the material used by the feather arrow." The sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai sai
Xia Fu fiddled with the corpses that had just been picked up by several insects. Suddenly, he shouted in surprise: "Master, those dead insects have actually come alive." Gongsun Yuan walked over and picked up the insects and looked at them for a while. He found that these insects were not dead, but were paralyzed and fainted by unknown things. Now he has just recovered.
Gongsun Yuan flashed a flash of inspiration, and he quickly took Pai to his nose and sniffed it. Suddenly, he felt confused and felt dizzy. He couldn't help but exclaim: "Is there really a dragon-tail bamboo in this world?" Because when Gongsun Yuan was young, he heard his master say that there was a bamboo called dragon-tail bamboo in this place in Huizhou a long time ago. Once this bamboo is soaked, it will secrete a toxin. This toxin has the effect of paralyzing the nerves. People who are poisoned will be paralyzed and lose their ability to move. Unexpectedly, this bamboo really exists.
Before Liu Hu asked someone to check whether the arrow was poisonous, and he would definitely not find any traces of poisoning, because the poisonous one was not the arrow, but the arrow body. The problem is that even if the blood soaks the arrow body and releases toxins, it will only cause the soldiers to lose their ability to move and not cause death! But why do those injured soldiers die?
Just as Gongsun Yuan was thinking, he accidentally saw a dim light in the villa on the mountaintop Lu Mansion opposite the mountain. The two looked at each other and were very surprised. Lu Daoyuan was dead, so why did the lights still light up in the room?
The two of them had time to think about it, and immediately ran down the mountain with their crossbows and ran towards the villa. At this time, a woman in the villa was looking for something in the room with a panic look.
After Gongsun Yuan and Xia Fu arrived at the villa, Xia Fu kicked open the door of the house. After seeing the woman, he was stunned and rubbed his eyes in disbelief, and shouted in a trembling voice: "Madam... is it you?" The woman was shocked suddenly. After seeing that the person coming was Xia Fu, two lines of tears flowed unconsciously, and ran over to hug Xia Fu and cried.
It turns out that this woman is Xia Fu's wife who has been missing for many years. Many years ago, the Jin soldiers invaded the Song Dynasty on a large scale, and Xia Fu took his family and others to leave his home and flee, but he met a team of Jin soldiers on the way. In a panic, Xia Fu got separated from his wife and children. At that time, Xia Fu was injured by the Jin soldiers and almost died. Fortunately, he was rescued by Gongsun Yuan who was passing by. More than a month later, when his injuries healed, he stayed at Gongsun Yuan's house and became a housekeeper. Why has he never given up on his determination to find his wife and children for many years? He has been inquiring from all over the world, but unfortunately there is no news.
At this time, Mrs. Xia suddenly saw the crossbow in Gongsun Yuan's hand, and her body couldn't help but tremble and couldn't help but scream.
Gongsun Yuan felt suspicious when he saw this and asked quickly: "Madam, have you ever seen such a crossbow?" Mrs. Xia shook her head in a panic expression when she heard this, expressing that she had never seen it.
Gongsun Yuan couldn't help but frown and continued to ask, "Dare you ask why Madam appears here?" Mrs. Xia stammered and said, "I... I passed by here... It suddenly started raining... I came in to hide from the rain!"
"All nonsense!" Gongsun Yuan shouted angrily: "You don't have any place wet with rain. Obviously, you have entered this room before it rains. How about hiding from the rain? Did you kill the old man who lives here because you covet the property in this room? Did you think of money and money? "
Mrs. Xia quickly defended, "No! It was Mr. Lu who begged me to kill him!" Then she cried and told the whole story.
It turned out that back then, Mrs. Xia and her son were both caught by Jin Bing. She was taken to a valley in Huizhou to cut bamboo and make feather arrows, and her son was sent to the mining area to mine ore. The Jin soldiers did not want those strong bamboos, but instead asked them to cut down those that looked disabled and weak, and repeatedly emphasized that they should not wet the bamboos.
Until a few days ago, she took advantage of the time when the Jin soldiers were not strictly guarding her, and she escaped from it. She ran to the yamen to report to the official, hoping that the government could send troops to rescue her son, but the yamen runners didn't care about this at all, but instead asked her to pay 200 taels of silver first. Not to mention two hundred taels of silver, she can’t even take out two taels of silver! Mrs. Xia, who was completely disappointed, walked aimlessly and unknowingly came to a foot of a mountain. She saw a villa on the mountain.
There is a kind old man in the villa who is studying a crossbow.When the old man saw that she was pitiful, he invited her into the villa and asked her if she had encountered any difficulties. At this time, Mrs. Xia could no longer hold it back and cried and told her experiences over the past few years.
After hearing this, the old man said in surprise: "Come here to see if you cut down the bamboo?"
Mrs. Xia went over and saw that the bamboo in the old man's hand was exactly the same as the bamboo that the Jin soldiers asked them to cut, so he nodded repeatedly. The old man didn't know what suddenly turned pale as snow, and he collapsed to the ground in an instant, muttering to himself: "Only after the disabled and weak dragon-tail bamboo is soaked, it will secrete toxins. I just discovered it two years ago. How did Jingou and the others know?"
The old man pondered for a long time, and suddenly looked up and said: "You come back at this time tomorrow, I will help you solve the problem of money."
The next day, Mrs. Xia arrived as promised, old The man said with a low expression: "He used to agree that carpenters should be committed to developing new agricultural tools. However, three years ago, his son was killed by Jin soldiers on the battlefield, which also made him understand the necessity of developing powerful weapons. Only in this way can he resist foreign invasions and the people can live and work in peace and contentment."
Since then, he has been staying in his door and focusing on studying new weapons. Unexpectedly, he has really made him develop a new type of stroll with a range of more than 300 steps and extremely accurate. However, this kind of crossbow has a disadvantage, that is, its penetration is insufficient, so he thought of using the unique dragon-tail bamboo in Huizhou as an arrow. In this way, as long as the Jin soldiers are injured by this feather arrow, they will temporarily lose their ability to move, so that the Song soldiers can reduce casualties and take the opportunity to pursue them.
However, this kind of crossbow also has a fatal weakness. Once this weakness is known by the Jin soldiers, the Song soldiers may be wiped out by the army! It is for this reason that the old man has not dedicated this kind of stumbling to the court for a long time, but continues to study how to enhance the penetration of bows and arrows.
It was not until yesterday that Mrs. Xia accidentally broke into the villa that he realized that in order to deal with the new crossbow he had studied in the Jin soldiers, he had inexplicably fallen into the hands of the Jin soldiers. After thinking about it, only his son-in-law Zhang Kuo could get in touch with this kind of crossbow drawing except himself.
Last night, he went to confront Zhang Kuo angrily, but he didn't expect that Zhang Kuo admitted without any concealment, admitting that he sold the design drawings of the crossbow to Jin Guo at a high price.
Lu Daoyuan was furious after hearing this and said: He wants to expose his collusion with the enemy and treason. But Zhang Kuo said with a sneer on his face: "I had already claimed that when you were in seclusion, you became a madman because of the successive deaths of your son and daughter. Now everyone outside knows that you are crazy. You go out and say that I am traitoring the enemy. Do you think they will believe it?"
Lu Daoyuan had no choice, so he asked Mrs. Xia to help him. He told Mrs. Xia that there was a dilapidated temple on the mountain opposite Mrs. Xia, where he placed a stroll, and had aimed the arrow on a recliner in the back garden. After he lay down, Mrs. Xia just had to start a crossbow.
Although Mrs. Xia was unwilling to do anything, Lu Daoyuan was firm in his attitude. He wanted to attract the attention of the court through his own death, and then he could follow the clues to find out the crossbow. But what he didn't expect was that all the constables in the government were corpses and were just thinking about making money, and no one paid attention to this matter at all.
After learning about the cause and effect, Gongsun Yuan and Xia Fu both sighed.
Even if you know the reason now, Gongsun Yuan still has no way to explain why those Song Bing who were injured by bows and arrows died of strange diseases. The three of them discussed and decided to check it out first.
When the three of them arrived at the military camp, they happened to be lunch. When Liu Hu learned that Gongsun Yuan was coming, he immediately came out to greet him. Gongsun Yuan saw that the soldiers were eating a pot full of sparse water-like porridge, with green wild vegetable leaves floating on it.
Liu Hu smiled bitterly and said that the court's food and salary cannot be replenished in time, and the soldiers have been drinking porridge and water all year round.Fortunately, there are many unknown wild vegetables growing near the military camp, otherwise the soldiers would not be able to eat enough. Gongsun Yuan quickly scooped out some vegetable porridge from the pot and looked at it carefully.
Liu Hu saw this and asked, "Master, what's wrong? Is this wild vegetable poisonous? It shouldn't be! When I decided to use it to cook porridge, I had specially found someone to test it. This wild vegetable is not poisonous."
Gongsun Yuan said, "This wild vegetable is called purslane . Although it can be eaten, it is also a Chinese medicinal material. Adding it to other drugs can accelerate and strengthen the effects of other drugs. After those soldiers were shot in the arrow, the toxins of dragon-tail bamboo seeped into their bodies. Because they have been eating purslane for many years, the efficacy of purslane will greatly enhance the paralysis effect of the toxin of dragon-tail bamboo, and eventually cause the injury to die."
Liu Hu was shocked after hearing this and quickly ordered everyone to stop eating purslane and asked people to throw away all the purslane in the camp. At this time, Gongsun Yuan, who was standing beside him, hurriedly shouted: "Let's go."
Liu Hu was about to ask why, but then he thought that since purslane can turn the toxin of dragon-tail bamboo into a deadly poison, why can't he make good use of this? Maybe it can become a good way to defeat the enemy.
Liu Hu selected dozens of elite soldiers with high martial arts skills that day, led the team himself, disguised as ordinary people, rushed to Huizhou overnight, and then successfully found the place where the Jin soldiers cut down the dragon-tail bamboo according to the route provided by Mrs. Xia. Because they were unexpected, they did not take much effort to wipe out all the Jin soldiers guarding here and seized a large number of dragon-tail arrows. Gongsun Yuan used purslane to turn all the dragon-tail arrows into poisonous arrows.
Song Bing used this poisonous arrow and killed the Jin soldiers backwards, without any resistance.
Liu Hu took advantage of the victory and rushed the Jin soldiers to the border in less than two months. In the process, they also dropped a mine specializing in using refugees to mine. Xia Fu's son was trapped inside, and Xia Fu's family was finally able to reunite. Gongsun Yuan was relieved to see the defeat of the Jin soldiers, which made Xia Fu and others return home with peace of mind.
However, a few months later, Gongsun Yuan, who was in Huizhou, heard a bad news. Liu Hu, the famous general Yue Fei, and several generals were all sentenced to death by Qin Hui on false charges. A month later, the Song Dynasty announced peace talks with the Jin soldiers. The Song and Jin countries used the Huai River as the boundary. Emperor Gaozong paid tribute to the Jin Kingdom and guarded half of the country and lived in a corner.
After hearing this news, Xia Fu was furious and couldn't help but curse: "Is the emperor's head squeezed by the door? Seeing that the Jin soldiers are powerless to return to heaven and victory, the emperor will actually believe the treacherous ministers' bluntly saying that they will slaughter heroes. It's really stupid."
Gongsun Yuan sneered sadly: "The emperor is not stupid. Have you ever thought that if Liu Hu and his father-in-law drove the Jin soldiers out of the Song Dynasty, maybe they really might destroy the Jin Kingdom and rescue the two emperors of Huiqin . If this time really comes, can Emperor Gaozong continue to save his throne?" After hearing this, Xia Fu was enlightened.
Gongsun Yuan was already discouraged by the Song Dynasty at this time. He knew that this country would be over sooner or later. Soon after, he and Xia Fu's family moved to the depths of the mountains and lived in seclusion. I don't want to see the rotten court.
complete
